Naked in the night
VARIOUS people have been in contact, recalling escapades in Zululand. Wordsworth, the hack whose columns on the vagaries of the English language once graced the pages of this newspaper, has in recent weeks been sending in accounts of what is happening in Dubai.
By a process of triangulation the memory has been jogged and I am now able to bring you an account concerning both Wordsworth and Zululand.
Wordsworth and his lady were overnighting at the old Mtunzini hotel (the same one, you will recall, where a circuit court judge was able to climb in again through the ground floor window to re-invade a Women's Institute cocktail party from which he had been evicted for telling blue jokes).
They met salubrious company in the bar and eventually retired to bed. Lady Wordsworth was already stacking zeds. Wordsworth always sleeps au naturel. He lingered at the open window to savour the luxuriant Zululand night, with its cricket chirpings and fruit bat pingings, and smoke a reflective last cigarette.
He leaned out to savour more deeply. Then he slid all the way out. Thump! He was in a flower bed. Stark naked.
Now the circuit court judge had managed to climb back in without any trouble. But the ground is uneven. Wordsworth's ground floor bedroom window was too high above the ground for that. Try as he might, he couldn't scramble in.
He called to his lady. The response was a steady snoring. He threw pebbles through the open window. Steady snoring. He shouted. He threw large rocks. Steady snoring.
In desperation, Wordsworth reconnoitred. The hotel's front door was locked. Then he was caught in a beam of torchlight. It was the Zulu night watchman, who was not at all impressed to find a naked man trying to get into his hotel.
Using his best Fanagalo, Wordsworth tried to explain what had happened; that he needed to get back to Lady Wordsworth.
This really jolted the night watchman. Here was a naked man demanding to be let in to find a woman. He was absolutely outraged. He menaced Wordsworth with his knobkierie and told him to get back wherever he came from – fast!
At which the manager was aroused by the racket. He recognised Wordsworth and let him in, falling about laughing. Lady Wordsworth was still snoring. Wordsworth himself missed breakfast next day.
These things happen in Zululand.
Back at school
"INTOMBI yakithi upatha ukhamba ..." The girl from our place is carrying a beer pot. I think I've correctly remembered the opening lines of my Zulu reader at school. That was back in the fifties when learning a vernacular language was not the in-thing it is today. But we did it all the same.
National Education Minister Blade Nzimande is spot-on if he believes people should learn a vernacular language as a step toward better mutual understanding. You can't fully understand a man, know where he's coming from, unless you speak his language.
But Comrade Blade is totally up the creek surely when he says vernacular language proficiency should be the condition of being awarded university degrees. Vernacular languages can have no relevance in the fields of engineering, nuclear physics, philosophy or whatever. They should be taught at school level because it's in day-to-day life that mutual understanding is required.
Of course, Nzimande's plan ain't gonna happen. The Bill of Rights would probably stymie it, not to mention the logistics in an education system that is already staggering.
But why this fixation with vernacular languages? Nowhere else in Africa is there a similar fixation. The Nigerians know that to understand one another – they have scores of different languages – and to link with the outside world, they need English. Elsewhere it's French and Portuguese. The vernacular languages are not an issue.
This is surely a perverse boomeranging from the Verwoerdian era when there was such emphasis on the vernacular languages. Somewhere in the cosmos there must be a seraphic Verwoerdian smile. The Bantu learned well.
Tailpiece
MY MATE'S missus left him last Thursday. She said she was going out for a pint of milk and never came back. I asked how he was coping and he said: "Not bad, I've been using that powdered stuff."
Last word
I believe that a scientist looking at non-scientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.
GRAHAM LINSCOTT
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